Well, it was almost 12mins but that's neither here nor there - doesn't matter in the slightest right now. Tonight was about taking my brain out and reminding it that my body is entirely capable of running if it would just shut the hell up for a bit. So I walked up the hill, turned around and ran back down, exactly a mile, to prove a point to myself. The point was proved in less than two minutes, actually - I wasn't even halfway through the first track on my list before I was smiling and feeling light enough to fly home, and I almost certainly could have pushed on further.
That "I could do more" feeling turns out to be really important to me for the next session, though - I find I manage my expectations better if I stop with a little bit left in the tank each time. If I finish exhausted it's harder to go out again and push further; I guess I get worried that I've hit the "this far and no further" point. Fear is a big issue for me in fitness. One of my major worries is ending up with an injury that means looking after the kids becomes difficult or stops me continuing along my training path. That's not an excuse to take it easy but it does mean I need that little buffer to keep me moving along...or that carrot of "Ok, I did 5km and felt good...can I do 5.5km next time? 7.5km? 10km? Can I go faster?" and so on. It certainly works that way for swimming, anyway. I hate having to deload weights and go down then back up again, although I understand that can be useful. Stepping backwards to retrain in crawl when I was close to hitting the Ironman swimming distance in breaststroke was really hard - but with a creeping rotator cuff soreness it had to be done, and I'm half-way back to where I should be.
This interview with endurance swimmer Jaime Patrick popped up in my Twitter feed whilst I was writing and it's an interesting take...I don't think I'll get to ultra stage for anything but it's the same driver of always having a challenge in front of you. That's why I like the idea of Tri - I get three sets of sports to be challenged with!
Calorie tracking day 4: it's horrible, I hate it. I feel I'm eating normally and I'm well below my target calories, in fact I went over by 12cal today just because I had a scone with jam and cream...not a normal occurrence. Despite eating not much differently to usual I've had a headache for three days and am hungry a lot of the time. I'm sure this is just psychological. Tracking, however, has illustrated that I'm surprisingly down on carbs, usually low on protein and probably shouldn't indulge my love of cheese quite so much...but life without cheese isn't worth living!
